Josée Gagnon – Nouveau Monde Graphite

For Josée Gagnon, the path to becoming a lawyer was never mapped out in advance. It unfolded through a series of pivotal moments, unexpected mentors, and hard-won self-knowledge — a journey that eventually led her to the boardrooms and financing tables of one of Canada’s most ambitious clean-energy projects, where legal strategy and business vision operate as a single discipline.

Josée Gagnon | Nouveau Monde Graphite | Chief Legal Officer

Gagnon did not begin her studies with law in mind. During her college program in Policy Technology, she developed a foundational understanding of how legal frameworks operate in Canada and Quebec, exploring the theoretical principles and practical implications of criminal and penal law. That exposure changed something in her. The intellectual rigor of legal analysis, combined with its immediate real-world stakes, drew her in deeper than she had initially anticipated.

“What particularly appeals to me about the practice of law is the balance between analytical rigor and practical application — the need to interpret complex legal concepts, construct well-reasoned arguments, and apply them to concrete situations presents a level of intellectual challenge that I find deeply motivating,” she says.

She pursued law at the University of Montreal, where a chance encounter with a professor specializing in financing and business law would quietly redirect the course of her career. He was a rare and compelling example of professional integration — running his own business, teaching at both undergraduate and master’s levels, and maintaining a rich personal life all at once. Watching him manage those competing demands with apparent ease, Gagnon began to seriously reconsider what kind of career she actually wanted for herself, and what kind of lawyer she might become.

At the Quebec Bar School, rather than joining a large firm as many of her peers did, she chose a smaller firm focused on commercial law and some litigation work. It was during that articling experience, and in the two years she stayed on afterward, that she discovered something important about her own temperament. She was not built for adversarial work. She preferred building things to fighting over them, and collaboration over confrontation.

“I found that I am not naturally inclined toward adversarial settings — I do not particularly enjoy arguing for its own sake or needing to win in every situation,” she says.

The move in-house

After a productive stretch at another firm where she concentrated on mergers and acquisitions and general commercial law, Gagnon made a deliberate move in-house. In private practice, she had come to understand that she had found the rigor and precision that form the indispensable backbone of any serious legal career. But it also came with structural limits. Once a deal was closed, her visibility into the organization’s longer journey typically ended. She wanted more than episodic involvement in the businesses she was helping to build.

Moving in-house brought her face-to-face with a challenge she had not fully anticipated. Legal teams, she discovered, are not always perceived as strategic partners within an organization. They can be seen as gatekeepers — functions that slow things down or restrict options rather than actively help move business forward. That observation permanently shaped how she approaches her role and positions her team.

“I have made it a priority to work closely with business teams, building strong relationships and positioning myself as a true business partner rather than simply a provider of legal opinions,” she says.

To further sharpen her business instincts, she pursued an MBA — a decision that proved genuinely transformative. It gave her the language and analytical frameworks to engage in conversations that went well beyond strictly legal analysis: deal structuring, risk-reward trade-offs, long-term strategic planning, and the logic behind major business decisions. It helped her translate complex legal considerations into terms that decision-makers could readily understand and act upon with confidence.

Leading through complexity

Today, Gagnon serves as chief legal officer at Nouveau Monde Graphite, a Quebec-based company developing one of North America’s most significant natural graphite projects. The company is working to produce carbon-neutral, battery-grade graphite to supply the rapidly growing electric vehicle market, with its primary asset located in the Laurentians region of Quebec. It operates with a vertically integrated approach spanning mining, purification, and the production of advanced graphite materials — positioning itself as a strategic supplier in the North American clean-energy supply chain amid intense global competition for those resources.

In her current role, Gagnon sits at the intersection of corporate governance, complex project financing, and international partnerships. The company is in its development phase, with the immediate priority being securing the capital needed to enter construction. That involves navigating both equity offerings and project debt financing with highly sophisticated national and international investors and lenders, often across multiple legal jurisdictions and amid a turbulent global economic and geopolitical environment.

“The complexity of these structures, particularly in a cross-border context, creates a strong intellectual challenge that I find very engaging,” she says.

Her leadership philosophy reflects the same duality that has defined her career. She embeds her legal team within the business rather than keeping them at arm’s length, ensuring lawyers are present in meetings not just as observers but as active contributors who understand the objectives behind each request. She deliberately dismantles the traditional walls between legal and operational functions, stepping into broader project discussions and problem-solving conversations whenever the situation requires it.

“While I aim to enable the business and find workable paths forward, I also recognize the importance of drawing boundaries when necessary — if I believe that a course of action crosses legal or governance lines, I will not hesitate to raise it and ensure it is properly addressed, even if it requires slowing things down or challenging assumptions,” Gagnon says.

A philosophy rooted in experience

What ties all of it together is a view of law as something fundamentally different from a catalog of restrictions. For Gagnon, legal work is about enabling progress — identifying options, removing unnecessary friction, and helping organizations make decisions that are both responsible and strategically sound. It is a mindset built equally from her early years in private practice, her transition in-house, and the business education she deliberately chose to pursue.

The road from a college interest in criminal law to overseeing cross-border financing for a graphite company was not a straight one. But for Gagnon, the winding path was precisely the point. Each detour — the mentor who broadened her ambitions, the articling position that revealed her true temperament, the MBA that gave her a new professional vocabulary — added something essential that the next chapter would require. In a role defined by complexity, collaboration, and long-term consequences, she carries it all forward.